Players of Gor (37 page)

"Oh!" she said. I pulled up her garment and drew it up under her arms and over her breasts, and then hooded her with it. "Kneel here, facing the door," I said. "And wait."

She knelt, braceleted, hooded, in the narrow space betw4en the two bunks, facing the door.

I then left the wagon, padlocking it shut behind me. IN a moment or so, retrieving the plate, I rejoined Boots near the fire. He was still eating. I am not clear whether this was a third breakfast, or a mere continuation of a somewhat prolonged second breakfats. In the case of Boots, such distinctions would

page 222

occasionally prove difficult to draw. "The free woman has been fed," I announced.

"It is just as well," said Boots. "It is nearly time for lunch."

Boots was given to such jocular hyperbole. It was actually several Ehn until lunch time.

He gazed at Lady Telitsia. She wavered, slightly, and caught herself. I feared she might faint with hunger.

"May I speak, Master?" she whispered.

"Yes," he said.

She put her head down to the dirt. Her wrists were still tied before her body. "I beg for food, Master." she said.

"Are you hungry?" asked Boots.

"Yes, Master," she said.

"How long has it been since you have eaten?" inquired Boots.

"Since dawn, yesterday," she said, "when I, only a lowly slave, and the other woman, she noble and free, were fed in the brigand's camp."

"You are probably hungry, then," said Boots.

"Yes, Master," she said.

"Do you beg on your belly?" inquired Boots.

"Yes, Master," she said, putting her bound wrists forward and lowering herself to her belly. She lifted her head. It was at Boots's knee.

"Speak," said Boots.

"I beg food," she said.

"Speak more clearly," said Boots.

"Lady Telitsia begs for at the hands of her master," she aid.

"Turn to your side," said Boots.

She then lay on her left side. Boots then, delicately, carefully, bit by bit, by hand, fed her. After a time he let her kneel near him and then he continued, but by bit, little by little, to feed her from his hand. She looked up at him, from the palm of his hand, which she had been licking. She looked up at him in gratitude. It was on him that her food depended. Boots then piled a plate with food and put it down before her. "Head down," he cautioned her. "Do not use your hands." She then put her head down and ate from the plate, not touching it with her hands. Finally she was even licking at the plate. She, like the free woman, the Lady Yanina, had be ravenous. Boots then took the plate from her. "Kneel here," he said. She knelt immediately, obediently, where he had indicated, facing him. "Thank you, Master," she said, "for feeding me."

page 223

"What do you think?" asked Boots.

"A pretty slave," I said.

"Thank you, Master," she whispered, trembling.

From her reaction I conjectured she was a virgin.

"On your back!" said Boots. "Put your hands over your head! Throw your legs apart, widely!"

"What do you think?" asked Boots.

"She is clumsy," I said, "but she is prompt and earnest."

"I cannot even use her in a girl tent now," said Boots, gloomily. "They would demand their money back. She is desperately in need of training."

"I think she will learn quickly," I said.

"She will, or she will be regularly lashed," said Boots.

"You will prove to be an apt pupil, will you not, Lady Telitsia?" I asked.

"I will struggle to learn!" she said, "I will try to do my best to please my Masters!"

"You will prove to be an apt pupil, will you not, Lady Telitsia?" I repeated.

"Yes, Master!" she said.

"Kneel," said Boots.

Swiftly she scrambled to her knees.

Boots regarded her. "I suppose you will prove to be troublesome," he mused, grimly.

"No, Master!" she said.

"Or you will fail to be fully pleasing, and it will be necessary to sell you for sleen feed," he said.

"No, Master!" she said.

"You have dared beg for food," he said. "You grow bold. Doubtless next you will wish a scrap of blanket for the girl wagon, or next even, outrageous effrontery, a brief rag to conceal some bits of your beauty, at least provisionally, from the eyes of men."

"Let it be down with me as my Master desires," she said. "I am his slave."

"The slave's response seems suitable," I said.

"Perhaps," admitted Boots, grudgingly. "Lift your wrists," he said to the girl.

She did so, putting her head down, between her then-lifted arms. Boots removed the thongs from her wrists. "Put your hands on your thighs," he said. He then regarded her, kneeling naked, frightened, before him, her hands on her thighs. Her knees were press3ed closely together. This is a natural, defensive posture in a new female slave.

page 224

"Perhaps later," said Boots, "when you have had more training, I will permit you to knee with your knees wide."

"Yes, Master," she said.

"Are you not grateful?" inquired Boots.

"Yes, Master," said the girl,
 
"Thank you, Master."

"Now seek out Rowena, the blond slave," said Boots. "I am using her now as first girl in the camp. She will put you about your duties."

"Yes, Master," said the girl, rising.

"Slave," said Boots.

"Yes, Master?" said the girl, turning, and dropping again to her knees, addressed by a free man.

"On second thought," said Boots, "go to my wagon, there. Enter it. Inside, facing the front of the wagon, kneel down, putting your head to the floor. I think I will begin your training."

"Yes, Master," she said, frightened, and leaped up, hurrying to his wagon, to obey.

"It seems we will not be leaving this camping area today," I said.

"Tomorrow will be soon enough," said Boots. He then rose to his feet, belched, spit on his hands, wiped them on his tunic, and stalked slowly, ponderously, like a good-natured, rotund, draft tharlarion, perhaps having eaten too much, toward his wagon.

In a moment or two I, too, had left the gray, smoldering ashes of the breakfast fire behind me. I then found myself at my own wagon. I climbed the stairs, taking no care to conceal my approach. I noisily removed the padlock from the door, and let it fall back against the side of the door, suspended on its short chain. I would wait a long moment before I opened the door. Within, inside the wagon, the Lady Yanina would be kneeling. Next she would obey.

page 225

11
   
The Lady Yanina Is Included in the Act

 
"You cannot do this to me!" cried the Lady Yanina.

"Behold," called Boots meaningfully to the crowd, "not a slave, but a free woman!"

"Stop!" cried the Lady Yanina. "I am free! Save me! Someone save me!"

"Should we attempt to rescue her?" asked one stout youth of another.

"Do not be silly," said his fellow. "It is all part of the act."

"Of course," agreed the first. "How stupid of me to fear otherwise."

"Help!" shrieked the Lady Yanina.

I now fastened Lady Yanina's left wrist in its place on the colorful red, trimmed-in-yellow, backboard. I had already buckled her right wrist in place.

"Gather around, good friends, good people," Boots encouraged the crowd. "Look closely upon her. Examine her!"

The crowd, thus encouraged, pressed in about us.

"See her throat," cried Boots. "It is innocent of the collar! See her thighs! No brand is upon them!"

The crowd pressed closely about, some of the men skeptically, roughly, examining Lady Yanina for slave marks. Certainly her costume, incredibly brief and brightly spangled, bared most of the common brand sites utilized by Gorean slavers in marketing women.

page 226

"Help!" cried the Lady Yanina. "Help!"

"You are doing very well," I congratulated her.

"I am not acting!" she cried. "Help! Help!"

One of the men pulled the top edge of her lower garment out and down a bit from her body, peering within. "What are you doing?" she cried.

"She is not branded on the lower left abdomen," he informed the crowd.

I desisted from buckling her right ankle in its place on the backboard while a fellow checked the backs of her legs. She cried out in misery. "There is nothing here," said the fellow. I then fastened her ankle in place.

"Oh!" she cried. The fellow who had checked her lower left abdomen was now expanding his explorations to check her buttocks. "Stop!" she cried.

"There are no brands here," he said.

"Interesting," said a man.

Another fellow was thrusting up the fringe dangling from the narrow, twisted strip of cloth, covered with sequins, which was bound about her breasts, this serving to conceal her nipples.

"Take your hands off me!" she cried.

"There is nothing here," said the fellow.

With difficulty I caught her left ankle and buckled it, too, in its place, against the colorful backboard.

"Stop!" she cried. "Stop!"

"Nothing here," said the fellow, pushing back her head against the backboard. She was not branded either on the left side of the neck, behind and below the left ear.

"As you can see, Ladies and Gentlemen," said Boots, "on her lovely throat she does not wear the light collar of inflexible steel, that beautiful circlet proclamatory of absolute bondage. Similarly her beauty has not, as yet at least, as you can see, been graced by the imprinting upon it of some delicate emblem indicative of the status of property, some device recollective of the unmistakable, transforming kiss of the blazing iron! As advertised, as proclaimed, as announced earlier, she is a free female!"

"She cannot be a free female," said a man. "Otherwise she would not be used in this fashion."

"Come now," said Boots. "Surely you have all known free women whom you would have enjoyed treating in this fashion."

There was a great deal of laughter. One of the free women in the audience struck the fellow next to her with her elbow.

page 227

"Take your hands off me!" cried the Lady Yanina to one of the men standing near her, a fellow who had perhaps decided to resume the discontinued investigations of his peers. She then, to the horror of the crowd, spit virulently in his face. "Sleen! Sleen!" she cried at him. Then she turned her head to the crowd. "Sleen!" she screamed. "You are all sleen!" She spit out at the crowd, twice. Then she stood there in the straps, helpless, sobbing. The crowd observed her, in stunned silence.

"As you can see," said Boots, swiftly, enthusiastically, thinking like lightning, "she is, as advertised, as certified, a free woman! What more proof could you possible desire? What salve would dare to behave so?" It was an excellent point which Boots was making. No slave would be likely to behave in a fashion like that, or at least more than once. Such a behavior would be likely to be followed by hideous punishments, if not death by torture. How should I put this delicately? Perhaps, thusly: Insubordination in any form, of any sort, in even the tiniest, least significant degree, is not accepted from slave girls by their Gorean masters.

Suddenly, as it had become clear what had occurred, the crowd began to turn ugly. "Give her to us!" called a man. "Let us buy her!" called another. "We will take up a collection!" cried another, looking about himself. "Yes!" said a man. "Yes!" cried another. "I want her!" called a man. "She can pull my plow!" "We will brand her and put her in a collar quickly enough!" cried another. "Sell her to us!" called another. "If he will not sell her, let us seize her by force!" cried another.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen, ladies!" called out Boots, jovially. "Let us remain calm. No harm has been done. Let us get on with the show. Step back, step back, please."

Grudgingly the crowd stepped back a bit, clearing a half circle around the heavy, braced, upright structure of painted planks. I regarded the Lady Yanina. She was now trembling, terrified, in the straps. There were certainly enough fellows in the crowd, if they became unruly, to take her away from us. Also, of course, Boots would never have approved of vigorous altercations with paying customers, and certainly would have frowned upon slaying them, even a few of them. That sort of thing is not good for business.

Boots motioned me forward. I approached, the multiple sheath of saddle knives at my left hip.

"May I present Tarl, he of the Plains of Turia, he of the Lands of the Wagon Peoples, master of the mystic quivas, the famed saddle knives of the southern barbarians, come to us at

page 228

great expense and in spite of many perils by special arrangement with Kimchak, Ubar San of the Wagon Peoples!"

"That's Kamchak," I said. I thought I owed at least that much to my old buddy of the south. I supposed that if Kamchak had known his name was being used in this fashion, and mispronounced at that, and Boots was within his grasp he might have, as a joke, for Kamchak was fond of jokes, had Boots put in a sack and put out in front of the bosk, curious to see if they would move
 
in that direction on that particular morning. On the other hand, perhaps he would only have challenged him to a spitting contest or one in which the number of seeds in different sorts of tospits were guessed and then, if Boots lost, put him out with the bosk, to see what way they might move that day.